Tobias Dennerlein

Tobias holds a joint Ph.D. degree in Organizational Behavior from Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University) and HEC Lausanne (University of Lausanne). At IESE, Tobias teaches core classes on leadership, organizational behavior, and research methods at the MBA and PhD level.

Tobias’s research examines how leadership behavior (e.g., empowering leadership, narcissistic leadership, leader justice) and employees’ individual differences jointly affect employee creativity and performance. One stream of research examines when and why empowering leadership is most effective: Can empowering leadership be ineffective, “backfire” (i.e., yield undesired outcomes) under certain circumstances, or can employee traits substitute for its effects. Another stream of research investigates issues related to employee trust and organizational justice. Tobias is particularly interested in employee creativity and pro-active types of work behavior (e.g., speaking or managing up). He uses both experimental and cross-sectional methods in his research.

His work has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology and the European Journal of International Management. He presents his work regularly at premier management conferences such as the Academy of Management Meeting and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference. He is a member of the Academy of Management.

Tobias enjoys helping talented, bright, and motivated students to grow by supervising their Master or PhD thesis. He encourages students to reach out to him if their topics match his research interests.

Tobias worked in various industries (e.g., consulting, automotive, sporting goods) at both small/medium-sized and global companies (e.g., Adidas, Capgemini, Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen) across several countries, but gained most of his business experience in finance in Germany and the UK.

Areas of interest

• Leadership
• Achievement Motivation
• Groups and Teams
• Trust and Organizational Justice
• Managing Up
• Creativity